Abstract:Many thin fluid films are subject to instabilities caused by
a competition of short and long range intermolecular forces.
After breaking into droplets connected by an ultra-thin
film, the fluid will undergo a coarsening process in which
droplets both move and exchange mass on slow timescales. In
the context of a one-dimensional lubrication model, the slow
dynamics can be characterized in terms of a finite
dimensional set of evolution equations. From this, a scaling
law which governs the coarsening rate is derived.